The 17-hour cycle of Australia’s first major Islamist terrorist experience at home, which began early Monday, Dec. 16, with a hostage siege at the Lindt chocolate café in Sydney’s bustling central business district, will have afforded Australia’s counter-terror services more operational lessons than any studies of past incidents or attacks in far-off places. It could have been shortened had the stream of smart phone and social network messages from the hostages been put to efficient use, or if the Australian commandos had executed their raid sooner and differently.

Dozens of international intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies worldwide are seeking the identifies of two passengers with stolen passports aboard the Malaysian airliner which vanished Saturday, March 8, without a trace, with 239 people aboard. Interpol sharply reprimanded Kuala Lumpur security for failing to check its lists of stolen and lost passports against passengers’ documents. The FBI has found no signs of an explosion in the vicinity of the lost airliner. The cause of the crash remains baffling.

The bus carrying South Korean tourists from Egypt to Israel was rigged as a time bomb for Eilat, debkafile reveals. It blew up prematurely in Egyptian Sinai, killing three South Korean tourists and the Egyptian driver, and injuring fourteen, Sunday, Feb. 16 - shortly before the bus crossed into Israel. An explosion in downtown Eilat would have afforded the al Qaeda-linked Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis its first multi-casualty terrorist hit inside an Israeli town. Serious lapses were exposed in Egyptian security. North Korea voiced shock and outrage over the terrorist attack.

Russian special forces are engaged in a relentless offensive to pin down would be Islamist terrorists on their home ground or hideouts in Dagestan, Chechnya, Kirgizstan and Kabardino Balkaria, casting a wide safety fence around the Winter Olympic Games which opened in Sochi Friday, Feb. 7. Seven terrorists were killed in Russian operations. debkafile: This safety net is spread across the Caucasian and France, Austria and Germany, with special focus on suspected female suicide terrorists. This preventive operation must stay at top pitch until the Feb. 23 closing.

The Egyptian Brotherhood has nurtured ties with Islamist terrorist groups ranging from Sunni al Qaeda to Shiite Hizballah and its Iranian master. They date from the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi up to the present day.

Ambassador Chris Stevens and his CIA team wee assigned an undercover mission to take control of Muammar Qaddafi’s weapons arsenal, keep them out of terrorist hands and use them to promote US interests. This story was never told.

US weapons and Iranian Al Qods officers join the Iraqi army in a major anti-al-Qaeda offensive to foil Al Qaeda’s plan for its first caliphate across the Syrian-Iraqi frontier - but also to buttress the pro-Iranian Shiite crescent arching over the region.

If Pakistan’s new army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, goes through with the transfer of nuclear arms and missiles to Saudi Arabia, he ranges Islamabad on the side of Sunni versus Shiite by lending a Sunni power a nuclear capability versus a nuclear-armed Shiite Iran, whose “nuclear rights” have just been recognized by six world powers. Gen. Sharif must also adapt Pakistan’s armed forces to the US military exit from Afghanistan next year and decide whether to allow Saudi covert operations against Iran to continue from Pakistani soil.

The three terrorists killed by Israeli forces in the south Hebron village Yata Tuesday, Nov. 26, belonged to the first al Qaeda cell to infiltrate the West Bank from Sinai, most likely through Jordan, debkafile reports. They came to establish a major new network for attacking Israel and the Palestinian Authority - hence the combined army, Shin Bet and special anti-terror force’s expeditious action to terminate the cell. It is feared they were the harbinger of more infiltrations by al Qaide forces embedded around Israel’s borders in Sinai, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.

A Saudi warning reached Western intelligence agencies, including Israel, on Nov. 14, that Iran and Hizballah were plotting a major terrorist operation in Beirut as a diversionary stunt, debkafile reports exclusively. The tip-off came three days before twin suicide bombings struck the Iranian embassy and the Hizballah stronghold in Beirut Tuesday, Nov. 19, killing 25 people and injuring nearly 150. It was devised, said Saudi intelligence, to convince Hizballah fighters consigned against their will to the Syrian battlefield that they were fighting to defend their own home bases.

Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta said 39 people were killed and 150 injured in the terrorist attack on a Nairobi shopping mall Saturday, Sept. 21. In an address to the nation, he said the operation to “neutralize” the attackers continues and the entire country has gone on terror alert. The fate of a number of Israelis, some of whom owned businesses in the mall, is still being checked, although three were reportedly rescued. A Kenyan minister reported that Israeli Mossad agents were co-opted to the investigation. Americans were among the injured.